Chapter 11 - Baby Steps - Part 2

(Aiki, Chojo Village Outskirts)

Aiki had spent the previous night sleeping hidden in the tall branches of some tree near Nakaba Village.

Before the sub was up, she stealthily made her way to Chojo village, this time even more cautiously.

She knew the bandits could be anywhere on the 50 something kilometer stretch of the road, losing focus anywhere in the middle was out of the question.

She kept herself wrapped in her Wind Veil, walked slower and carefully chose the surfaces her feet would trample as she jumped from tree to tree, and as a final precaution...in the unlikely case that the banditry was some rogue/enemy ninja operation, she kept her chakra suppressed.

Suppressing chakra...technically anyone with sufficient and conscious control over their chakra flow could suppress it.

Chakra was an energy born of the merger between the tangible and the intangible, the vessel and the essence, the mind and the body, eternal merging with the transient.

It was life itself and thus it sustained life.

Any life with a sense of self was sustained by chakra.

Even in civilians who never had a shinobi in their bloodline for generations beyond record...Their subconscious mind generated spiritual energy, their Basal Metabolic Rate had a negligible but real percentage of energy consumed to generate physical energy...These were merged subconsciously in their body to generate just enough chakra to sustain life.

Those who trained their bodies and minds to past the limits of mere survival, would see their pathways grow more prominent, bodies turn stronger, minds grow sharper, and be able to refine more chakra.

But with this evolution, the chakra needed to sustain this evolved body increased. And it increased rapidly.

While an untrained civilian would either barely register or be imperceptible to a typical chakra sensor...even the newest genin was a bright beacon to their senses...someone like a Kage's chakra was overwhelming enough to be physically crushing, capable of inducing fear and choking the air out of people's lungs.

Suppressing chakra involved consciously limiting one's chakra refining, not unlike consciously holding one's breath.

It required a high degree of control over one's chakra, not only to limit the chakra refinement but also to make sure what meager chakra WAS refined was effectively circulated to major vital points (or whatever points were deemed vital as per the situation)

This had the benefit of vanishing from the sense of most chakra sensors...based on how refined one's technique was.

The only reason shinobi did not keep their chakra suppressed all the time was that the benefits were heavily outweighed by risks most of the time.

Without enough chakra supplied to the body, the starved parts over extended periods of starvation...just straight up die.

Without enough chakra refined in the body, no jutsu beyond the limits imposed by the reduced amount of available chakra could be performed.

Having limited chakra circulate in the body limited one's mind and body to the level that could be sustained at that level of chakra. Speed dropped, Strength left the body, Reactions slowed down, thoughts blurred...lethality and efficiency took a nose dive.

But for Aiki, it was a trade worth making since despite her 'large for her age and large in general' chakra reserves...she could only ever expel enough chakra at any instant for the academy 3 jutsus, maybe with training just enough for a body flicker but that was it.

Keeping her chakra restrained did slow her down, but she still ran at enough capacity to run fast and think fast enough to cover the distance from Nakaba Village to Chojo Village in a reasonable time of 5 hours.

And here she kept herself hidden in a tree, Wind Veil activated, Chakra suppressed.

Lying in wait for a small trading party carrying meat, fabric, or other such low profile goods...so she could tail them silently.

With any luck for her (and bad luck for the ones she tailed)...the bandits would reveal themselves.

Rest could be planned after that.

It took another hour of surveillance before one such trading party arrived.

"A man, A woman, A teenage girl and an even younger boy...definitely a family...carrying...dried meat and herbs...perfect.", Aiki decided to follow them.

This family ticked all the boxes on her checklist.

Small group, Trading in low profile goods, no visible weapons...if bandits were here, they would NOT miss a mark like that.

Her mind made up...She followed the family, jumping from tree branch to tree branch, while the kids sat in the cart that their parents pulled on the road.

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(Somewhere between Chojo and Nakaba, 10:30 AM)

The family had not even covered half the distance to Nakaba village...and already things looked grim for them.

Unknown to the family, Aiki had first felt and later visually confirmed a group of four armed men that started tailing them some 2 kilometers back.

They started following at a distance of about 400 meters. That's when Aiki sensed their chakra signatures.

At that distance, the signatures were dim and negligible to the point where Aiki could not resolve their numbers based on how their meager chakra interacted with her senses...but it was definitely noticeable to her keen senses even at almost half a kilometer away.

Estimating the numbers based on chakra sense alone was like trying to estimate the number of rice grains in a bowl...by looking at it from a kilometer away. The chakra signature of an untrained civilian was just too small. Visual confirmation was needed.

Aiki could see them now from her vantage point.

Hands on their swords, strides long and unbothered, undisciplined...but against an average family, dangerous.

The parents were too busy pulling the cart and keeping their kids entertained, the girl was too busy holding her little brother close to her, and the tiny guy was too busy sleeping...none of them knew of the VERY real danger they were walking into.

They only realized the danger they were in when they saw a group of four men standing on the road and blocking their path. Weapons drawn, message clear. It's over.

Aiki had sensed the group cutting off the family from the front before she saw them too.

But there was something that deeply disturbed Aiki about them...and forced her to up her caution to maximum.

Now that she was at a distance where she could see them, she used her eyes and chakra senses, and came to a grim conclusion, "That man in the center of their little group...the one with the long knife...his chakra is abundant enough to not be just some two bit bandit scum. That man is...or was...a shinobi."

That...had just pushed her mission difficulty from a casual C-rank to the VERY upper borders of C-rank...maybe even B if he wasn't the only shinobi here.

Her initial plan was one based on common sense. Constrained and effective.

Immediate Steps: Confirm the instance of banditry. Sense for any lookouts in surrounding areas. Subdue and Bind the lookouts as soon as possible. Subdue and Bind the exposed forces.

Following that: Interrogate the captives regarding their base's location. Torture was not a reliable source of credible intelligence but fear was. She could use her words to induce fear. If that failed, she could just cripple all of them but one, slowly building up fear in the last one and then asking the last one about the base's location.

Final steps: Swiftly reaching the bandit's base and subduing all of them. No baseline human could flee from a shinobi hunting them with no other shinobi to hinder them. The rare few who did ran, could never hide for long.

This was the way the baseline humanity worked, bound by common sense.

That fragile foundation on which her plan stood, was shattered now.

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While these thoughts went through Aiki's mind, the leader of the bandit group, the one with well developed chakra coils had walked up to the family, his knife brandished.

The father nodded at the mother who grabbed the two kids and turned to run away...her hand drawing out a short blade from her sleeve while her husband pulled a sword out of the cart.

But that heroic conviction of parents giving up everything for the sake of their children, was dashed under the cruel heel of reality the very next instant.

The four men who had followed the family all this time, had caught up with them.

Trapped on all sides, the mother only hugged her kids tighter while the father tried to somehow do the impossible and stand between both the groups at the front of his family and at the back, at the same time...the carefree and happy mood just a minute old now felt like a bad joke.

The leader moved closer, and sheathed his knife. The surprise on the trader couple's face was sharp enough to pierce steel.

In a smooth, diplomatic voice the man spoke, "You realize we have you at quite a disadvantage, yes?"

The trader man just nodded his head, yes.

"Good...Good, a few overzealous ones with nothing to lose or no self preservation instincts choose to resist at this point. But I see you have a lot to lose, or perhaps you are just smarter than the average traveler this road sees", he spoke as he brought up his hands to his chest.

The trader couple said nothing, they only looked at the man cautiously as he did something with his hands which they would have written off as an interpretive dance were the situation not so dire.

Finally after a few seconds of seeing the Bandit's spokesman more interested in doing his weird dexterity workout than talking to them, the trader man chose to break the ice.

"Please, just let us leave in peace...We will leave our supplies here for you...I have a family...surely you understand", he spoke each bit with a certain pause as if coming to terms with his misfortune on the fly.

The bandit's spokesperson didn't pay his words much attention, his response was totally unrelated. "Now, you two, lovely couple...we can discuss further if you would be kind enough to focus on my voice here.", he said as he kept doing what to the trader couple was nothing more than weird fidgeting.

The trader couple looked up at him, not in a mood to offend someone who held the power to decide life and death for them.

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Aiki looked on in horror from her perch.

"He is weaving hand sign!...that confirms it, he is definitely a shinobi. What do I do now?", her mind raced.

The ideal case would be her saving the family from whatever jutsu this man was trying to unleash, maybe even kill the shinobi in one strike and then proceed with plan as usual.

Even in this intense moment, Aiki found her thought laughable.

"Kill him in one strike...Ridiculous! There is atleast 30 meters of clear open ground with nothing to hide my approach! Forget the shinobi, even the bandits will see me approaching!", she thought through gritted teeth.

With her chakra suppressed like it was now, her speed was just too low for a game changing maneuver like that.

The bandit spokesperson finished his series of hand signs. He spoke out the name of his jutsu, "Genjutsu: Compliance"

Instantly the eyes of the trader couple glazed over.

"Dammit...Genjutsu, that explains why nobody reported signs of banditry or struggle.", Aiki looked on from the sidelines.

The road from Chojo to Nakaba did not see heavy traffic, but it wasn't empty either...if regular bandits operated here, sooner or later someone would have reported them.

A sufficiently guarded caravan could have exterminated the ones ambushing them too, reducing their numbers immediately and reporting them to authorities, marking them for execution.

But if the victims themselves were to reassure their helpers that nothing is wrong, then who would ever learn the truth?

"Diabolical, who knows how long this has been going on for...how long it would have gone on for...if I hadn't seen this today.", Aiki clenched her fists.

"Now, my question to you is simple, answer it truthfully. If you were to go missing, would any relative, superiors, friends, or such...would come to search for you?", The shinobi bandit asked the trader couple.

"What the hell kind of evil question is that! What do I do? I need to save them...but I can't do it at the cost of my mission!...there has to be way...", Aiki felt sweat pour under her mask, air felt hotter.

If she were to save the innocent family, she had to give up on suppressing her chakra, let her body drink deeply of her passive chakra flow and strengthen itself.

Then she could hope to use her element of surprise and with any luck kill or incapacitate the enemy shinobi and then go after the small fry.

BUT

She couldn't be sure that there wasn't a chakra sensor with a range greater than her's on the enemy side.

Unleashing her chakra, would scream out her location to every chakra sensor in a wide area. Any other bandit shinobi, if they were on a lookout deeper in the forest...would pick up her location and rush to alert the rest of the base!

Aiki was the only party in this ordeal who would benefit from stealth, the other party could just loudly alert every enemy to her presence and then it would be HER fighting for her life.

She could lift the heavy suppression she had subjected her chakra to a little bit, just to extended her senses a little further without inviting attention from far away sensors...but what if the man controlling the trader family itself was a sensor and she was just out of his range as she was!

Too many variables...Too many ways it could go wrong...she couldn't think of a way out!

The trader couple meanwhile, shook their heads in a "no" gesture as an answer to the shinobi bandit's question.

"Good! That makes it easy for us...Now, follow my men 20 paces into the woods, both of you.", he ordered.

The couple obeyed. The man still held his sword and the woman still hugged her children, who were under the genjutsu as well.

Aiki looked on from the tree in horror.

"Mission!...Failure!...Save them!...What do I do?...", the sheer weight of choices and consequences had ground her mind to dust in that instant.

She was sweating hard. If Wind Veil was not activated, her breathing would have sounded like a man dying from heart attack.

Without ceremony, the bandit leader snapped his fingers.

For Aiki, it was as if time had slowed down...so that the consequences of her choice, inaction, and weakness, would FOREVER be burned in her mind.

The bandit henchmen...in a swift practiced swing...beheaded both the trader and his wife.

Aiki saw their heads stay right where they were for a single...eternal...moment. Only a thin red line across their necks, slowly seeping down keeping her from finding comfort in denial.

Then...inertia gave way to gravity...The bodies fell down, the joints folding nearly instantly like balloons deflating.

Aiki could feel their eyes lock on to hers for an instant, as if damning her for being a silent witness to their murder...a compliant party in their untimely deaths.

The blood shot out from their sliced arteries, their hearts had still not caught up with the fact that it was beating for the last time ever.

The haunting arc of the arterial red, the dull sickening thud of the bodies, the metallic tang of blood, the oppressive heat and sweat under her mask, and the taste of bile that rose in her throat...and the sudden vanishing of two faint chakra signatures, leaving behind a momentary vacuum in her sense.

It was as if nature itself was giving out a divine punishment to all of her senses for her compliance in this unforgivable act, an act from which she could never return.

"W-What the HELL was I thinking...shinobi...mission...investigation...Im just some weak nobody!", if she had enough control over her body besides becoming as small as possible and suppressing her chakra as hard as she could...the responses drilled into her sub-conscious when she was a child...then she would have punched herself hard enough to knock out teeth.

"C-rank mission...C?! TWO LIVES LOST BECAUSE OF MY HUBRIS! This is NOT some pretty label on a mission file...this is life and death! People died because I was too powerless...what if some actual ninja took this mission instead of me", Aiki could feel tears well up in her eyes.

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Oblivious to Aiki's breakdown the bandit now approached the children dropped by their mother after...her end.

The fall had hurt the two kids and that pain had taken them out of the genjutsu that bound them.

This did not go un-noticed by the caster, who signaled his men to grab hold of the girl and her little brother.

The girl was visibly out of sync with reality and was in the process of properly gaining consciousness...the leader of the bandits did not wait.

He issued a sharp slap to her face, how her neck didn't break was a testament to the durability of the human body.

Her first instinct was to scream but when her eyes went to the knife pointed to her little brother's throat...and what was left of her parents on the ground...all she could do was silently sob.

"Hmmm...no, your voice isn't up to my standards... we'll have to fix that.", the leader spoke as if he were critiquing a bonsai plant.

Faster than any of his men could see, he grabbed hold of the girl's chin and squeezed open her mouth.

Before she knew, his blade slipped in her throat through her mouth, and severed her vocal cords with the terrifying precision of someone who knew his way around both blades and throats.

Her eyes widened, her jaw opened wide in a silent scream, but only hot air and barely audible whispers left her throat...her writhing in pain was louder than anything she would ever speak again.

"Better! Better?", he looked at his men and asked casually. His men nodded, too afraid to cross him.

Without warning he bent down, and slashed her behind her ankles and knees...the tendons that once supported her weight were gone. Walking, even standing up, would forever be a thing of the past for her.

If her vocal cords were not already gone...the single continuous throaty exhale and the wide eyed stare at the sky were signs that her screams would have definitely shredded them.

Confronted with the hellish reality, her only way of coping was to look at her little brother...so small, so innocent...so, red?

Her eyes almost bulged out of her sockets...the bandit leader had plunged his knife into her brother's little chest, his own blood dyed him red.

She had begged for mercy from anyone or any God that would answer...it seemed the only mercy she was afforded...was that her baby brother went still after a mere 20 seconds. His little lungs too full of their own blood for him to even scream.

But she had paid the price for this 'mercy'... In his final moments, his eyes had locked on to hers...as if silently reaching out for help from her big sister.

She had lost everything.

Her mind was static now. She didn't feel pain, she didn't feel sadness, she didn't feel anger.

All she did now, was wait for the sweet release of death, so she could once again be with those who were her world.

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Aiki saw everything that went down, her body paralyzed by the weight of what just unfolded in front of her.

Death was not new to her, the Academy had always drilled into them that shinobi were those who killed and died for their orders. She had even hunted as part of the Academy curriculum.

Interrogation arts too, she was familiar with...she was good at it. Torture was a part of it, she was not a stranger to it's existence or application.

But this...this was...beyond human cruelty. This was demonic!

What was that girl's sin? She couldn't have been that much older than Aiki herself, maybe 14, 16 at most...flip of the coin and maybe it would be HER in that place.

She felt like a leaf broken off the branch...drifting, sinking, listlessly to the rock bottom...nothing anchoring her to reality.

"Is this the reason so many stay genin? Is this the reason why the C-rank line was so short?", Aiki thought less to reach an answer and more to run away from the reality...more hellish than any tales...unfolded in front of her.

"Mission...Yes, Mission...the mission...it's over right...I can go home! I should go home...this is messed up!", Aiki's mind looped, worst case scenarios kept playing as her worldview shattered more and more.

The bandit leader's next words broke her out of her dark spiral.

"You two...take her to my room, chain her up good...I'll let you all have her soon. Lay a hand on her before that and I'll know...I'll make sure I chop that hand up and shove it down your throats.", he said with a disgusting smile.

Two of his men dragged the now broken husk of a girl to wherever the hell their hideout was.

"The rest of you...I want that cargo delivered to the base as soon as you are done dealing with these bodies." After issuing orders to his men he turned around and flickered away, his men's lack of reaction suggesting it was a normal occurrence for them.

Aiki heard it all and saw it all.

"WHAT?...they can't be human...what the HELL is wrong with these bastards...they can't be...", her thoughts were cut short as bile rose in her mouth once more.

She gathered herself once more, but her eyes caught the bandits using their weapons to chop up the bodies that not even 10 minutes ago were a happy family!

They had names! They had hopes and dreams! That boy was no older than 8...maybe even 5!

That girl...Aiki wasn't a stranger to what they intended to do to her.

"It wasn't enough for these demons to take away her wealth, her family, her autonomy and her dignity...they want to take her innocence too...they want to corrupt everything...Demons!...No, they are more disgusting and weak...leeches, filthy vermin", Aiki seethed under her mask...her clenched fist would have drawn blood were it not for her gloves.

In that moment of realization...All her self loathing, her anger, her doubts, all her negative emotions...they coalesced into cold and brutal resolve.

The helpless leaf falling at the whims of the wind, now did so no longer.

No anger on her face now, no righteous fury, no sadness...nothing.

Her face was neutral...clear.

Just like her resolve.

"I am going to personally snuff out each and every one of these wretched vermin's life...and I will save that girl from the fate that awaits her."

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Aiki burned every detail of those 15-20 hellish minutes into her mind.

The henchmen left behind, tore to shreds the mortal remains of the unfortunate family with practiced ease.

Not one cut they made was clean, the still cooling corpses were not afforded the slightest bit of dignity.

Whatever sufficiently attached chunks of sinew, bone, meat and hair were sufficiently big enough to suggest they were a human once, were left discarded not even 20 meters off the road. Not in plain sight, but easily easy enough to discover if someone looked close enough.

Whatever else the henchmen had carved out of what they left as an aftermath of their macabre butchery, two of the eight wrapped it all in cloth and hoisted it over their shoulders.

Two of the six left empty handed walked over to the cart and got in position to pull it to wherever they needed to take it.

The remaining 4 drew weapons and arranged themselves in a defensive formation, ready to escort their spoils to their base.

Aiki saw everything, not daring to take her eyes off the atrocity that had occurred in front of her eyes...still blaming herself in some capacity, but she swallowed it all...she had a girl to save and that immediate, tangible goal kept her from breaking down.

"So that's how they hid in plain sight...Anyone who finds these brutalized corpses before animals do, would look at them and assume it was an animal attack...Though, they wouldn't be wrong...the ones who did it, definitely don't deserve to be called human.", Aiki thought as she leapt into action.

She silently followed the returning party, keeping her chakra suppressed and steps light.

She didn't know if there were multiple shinobi or chakra sensitives in the bandit's group, or if any of them were close by...stealth was her life line till she gathered more intelligence.

After two hours of stalking, the forest gave way to a clearing. Aiki did not follow them into the clear ground, watching them instead from the top of a tree.

A reasonably flat piece of land lined by hills on one side and dense forest on all others, whether the trees were cleared by the bandits for better visibility of approaching threats or it was naturally barren...mattered little.

What mattered, was the cave that grew into the foot of the hills that lined the border of the clearing opposite the treeline Aiki was hidden in. That was where the bandits she followed were headed towards.

"Their base...", Aiki concluded.

The cave entrance was wide enough to let 4 men stand side by side...considering the 4 men, which Aiki concluded were part of the Bandit group as well, that stood guard there. The cave further descended underground, but Aiki couldn't be sure of the layout looking from her vantage point, some good 200 meters away.

One thing she was sure of was that the shinobi, the bandit leader, was in there.

His chakra was not immense by any means, compared to a jounin like Hitoshi-sensei...his chakra was like a bonfire against a house fire.

This far away from him, Aiki felt it's stimulus further drop to a candle's flame. But to Aiki's keen senses, it's subtle warmth was picked up all the same.

Even then, no matter how good her senses...at this long a distance and with who knows how thick a layer of rock and earth between her and the inhabitants of the cave...she couldn't be sure about the number of un-trained bandits inside the cave.

The civilian level chakra 'reserves', of the average bandit inside that cave, could stimulate her chakra senses no more than an exhale could boil water.

"I need to know how many there are...Now that I have decided to intervene and save that girl, I cannot let even a single one escape with their life." With that thought, Aiki started to think of ways to get closer without being seen.

Even if Aiki were to throw caution to the wind, let her chakra empower her body to the maximum, and push herself to the very limit of her speed...it would take her no less than 6 seconds to cover the 200 meters that separated her from the cave's entrance.

In the broad daylight, with no cover of trees or bushes to hide behind, with the sun directly in front of her and behind the guards...they would easily spot her and scream an alert in the time it would take for her to reach them. And even after reaching them, it wasn't like she could instantly kill 4 alerted and armed men twice her height and weight.

If it were only about killing them, she could do it...it would only be a matter of time. But time was what she didn't have. In the seconds it would take to kill them, they would 100% alert others inside their hideout (and possibly anyone outside too) of her presence...and that was the failing condition for her mission, and if the bandit's shinobi leader was a fighter...then it would be a death sentence.

A frontal approach was thus, out of the question. "If I can't go to the front...and I can't turn back...then circling around the treeline is the only other option...Definitely beats staying put here."

Then, as if to validate Aiki's line of thinking...one of the bandits carrying the crude bundles full of the unfortunate family's bits collected the other bundle from his partner in crime and started to walk away from the group, walking along the impenetrable wall formed by the hills that hid their cave hideout.

Aiki also circled around, stalking him from the distant treeline as he followed the trail that curved around the hills, away from his group. She figured anywhere her target went with a purpose, was bound to reveal more intel faster than blindly stumbling around.

And after some 20 odd minutes, it proved itself to be the right idea.

The treeline now merged with the hills, the hills themselves had flattened out a bit, and they bordered a lake that fed into a tall waterfall.

The bandit carrying the grotesque payload, unceremoniously emptied it into the water. He then turned around and walked away before the chunks were carried even a few feet away from him by the water currents.

While the bandit was busy disposing off the evidence of his crimes, Aiki's thoughts were running fast.

"A lake..constantly draining into THAT massive waterfall? How the hell is that even possible...unless...unless this 'lake' is nothing more than a fat hole in the ground constantly being fed by a subterranean river!", Aiki's eyes lit up with realization.

Subterranean rivers were not uncommon in North and North-East Land of Fire...The glaciers of Land of Frost melted and the run-off often drained into subterranean channels that birthed the hot springs in the Land of Hot Water and continued flowing under the hilly ranges of the Land of Fire, finally draining into the ocean.

What this implied, beyond the neat geological fact...was that there was a river flowing under these hills...and based on the elevation of the land she had seen on her way to this place...the chances of it flowing directly under the cave the bandits were using as their base, were significantly high.

"If I use 'that' method...I just might be able to scout out that cave better", Aiki's features hardened...she now had a lead to pursue.

Aiki decided to do that later though, she wanted to tail this man back and see for herself if he would reveal any other route to the hideout.

But what she saw instead soured her mood, more than it already was.

The bandit, instead of walking all the way back to the entrance Aiki had followed him from...walked into the waist high shrubs and bushes along the narrow bank of the lake, took a turn and walked into the vegetation out of her line of sight.

Aiki couldn't see him now, so she focused on her chakra senses instead...and felt not one, but three chakra signatures...faint but unmistakably there!

Aiki strained her senses further, half to make sure she wasn't picking up false positives...and half to make up for the silly mistake of ignoring her arguably most important (if subtle) sense in the middle of the enemy territory!

Sure she would have sensed any enemy shinobi approach her even if she wanted to ignore it...but this mission had other enemies too, enemies that she forgot to see as a threat because they couldn't physically harm her and thus grew complacent.

"If I were any more careless and anyone of them saw me or even heard me...it could have been the end.", Aiki promised herself that she would never again be caught lacking like that.

Aiki sensed the two new chakra signatures stand unmoving while the third signature, that belonged to the bandit she had followed here, go further and down...and then slowly grow fainter till it was completely gone.

It didn't take a genius to understand what was going on, Aiki understood it at once...though that did not make her feel any better.

"A secret, secondary exit, guarded by two people...of course, no self respecting bandit who is smart enough to survive long enough to make a noticeable dent in a highway's revenue stream...would willingly establish his base in a cave with only one opening.", Aiki thought through as she ground her teeth in frustration.

A second exit had lowered her chances of doing what she needed to do by A LOT!

It was an easy escape route...Aiki couldn't pop out Shadow Clones like Naruto...she couldn't be at two places at the same time.

"Why can't things be simple for once...", Aiki complained to no one about the unfairness of it all for a moment.

"No...none of this was ever going to be easy or simple...lives are at risk here, and these animals would love to cling to their lives more than anyone considering what awaits them after it. I need to gather more intel...I cannot risk infiltrating carelessly, I need a proper plan."

Aiki decided she would first try to gather as much intel as possible about the numbers inside the cave, and if possible, the layout of the cave. Then she would try and verify the numbers through her chakra senses by going upstream the subterranean river.

"Now...which entrance do I stake out to fish for intel?", Aiki considered her options.

There were more places to conceal herself at the back entrance, she could get closer and still stay hidden...but the front entrance had more enemies guarding it, keeping out of sight would be tougher since there was no substantial cover around the cave for hundreds of meters.

In the end, Aiki decided the safer option and remained at the back to fish for intel from the two men guarding the cave's back entrance.

"As for making them talk...I just might have a way to do that...", Aiki thought as she put a hand on her thigh holster containing vials of her home brews.

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(Bandit Hideout, Back Entrance, 1 PM)

Twenty minutes had passed since Aiki decided on her plan of action.

During this time...Aiki had first discreetly made her way to the part of the treeline that was closest to the rocky walls of the hills.

Sensing no one nearby and seeing nobody approaching, she gathered the strength in her legs and leapt from the branch she was on straight towards the hill's wall...and latched on to it with both her hands and feet.

Walking on Walls, Walking on Trees, and other such gravity defying stunts required a level of chakra control that was well within Aiki's reach...but in her state of consciously directing what meager chakra she allowed her body to refine as she maintained chakra suppression...she did not take any unnecessary risk.

If being safe and upholding her objectives required her to walk up the hill walls like a lizard, on all fours...then that's what she was going to do.

And that's what she did.

It took her around 15 minutes to find a spot close enough to the back entrance and the guards, on top of the hills, where she could hear them talk and see them move...while staying out of the view of anyone down on the ground.

As for the chance of anyone showing up at her back, the hills were tall and impassable for the average man...and any shinobi trying to ambush her would be picked up by her chakra senses before she could see them anyway.

Once settled in her position, Aiki pulled out a small, slightly milky, vial from her thigh holster.

A Central Nervous System Suppressant...an opioid based compound that could show effects within 5 minutes of exposure at microgram levels of dosage in the common civilian.

Aiki had based it on the standard Academy recipe, but added her own touches to it. This particular recipe had won her the highest grade for Poisons course in the Kunoichi classes...even beating Ino.

Her plan was to deliver this drug to the two guards below her. guarding the back entrance...and watch if they reveal any intelligence in their compromised state.

But delivering that drug discreetly was a problem in and of itself.

The vial in her hand, held the suppressant dissolved in pressure liquefied Carbon dioxide. In a pinch, it was easy to just throw the vial at the enemy...and the pressurized gas that would escape as the vial broke, would deliver the now aerosolized poison in a wide area.

But in Aiki's current situation, throwing the vial at the guards and letting the escaping gases hiss was the last thing she wanted. Doing so would attract attention, and opening the vial far away from this place would be equally pointless.

Aiki came up with a solution for this predicament. A solution perhaps only she could come up with in the entire Ninja World.

She grabbed the vial in her hand, and let her mind focus on the fluid inside it...she felt the molecules of it vibrating.

Then...she exerted her control over them, slowly but surely, their vibrations dampened...She felt them trying to arrange themselves in neat continuous cubic lattices, only for larger drug molecules to break them apart as they took up interstitial niches.

The contents of the vial would keep 'sublimating' and 'freezing' as the pressure and temperature dropped inside the vial and liquid carbon dioxide became an impossibility.

Soon, in Aiki's hands was a vial, it's contents frozen solid...Aiki wasn't sure what the temperature of the contents was, but she was sure it should be around -120 Celsius based on the phase diagrams she had glanced at in the library.

"And once again, Im glad my powers do not let me feel the heat or the chill whenever I do this.", Aiki shuddered a little imagining what her fingers would be like if she were holding any other chunk of sub -100 Celsius material.

Aiki had used her heat manipulation ability to completely freeze solid the pressure liquefied Carbon dioxide and the non-polar drug molecules dissolved in it.

She took her Kunai, pressed it against the glass vial, and drove them both into the ground...with a swift and silent snap, the glass vial was open.

If Aiki weren't still maintaining the cooling for the frozen solid inside, it would have sublimated in her face...but Aiki did not particularly want a face full of her own drug in the middle of enemy territory, so she maintained her heat manipulation.

She tilted the vial and the frozen solid dropped in her hand...small, cold, and if not for Aiki's powers...utterly unnatural, only it's super cold temperature keeping it from sublimating like nature intended.

Aiki clenched her fist and crushed the dry ice solid in her palm into a powder, larger surface area...faster sublimation.

She then dropped that powder from her vantage point, on to the unsuspecting guards below.

Now, no longer subject to Aiki's will...laws of nature took hold, the frozen Carbon dioxide and the drug inside it sublimated into an aerosol before it was half way to the ground, only the heavy molecular weight of Carbon dioxide making sure that her payload would reach her intended targets.

For a minute Aiki held her breath, Careful not to inhale her own suppressant.

"This was a crude method at best...most of the drug will not be properly aerosolized and even the little that does might fly far away from those two...but it was the best I could have done, and it's not like I want them asleep or unable to speak.", Aiki had done the best she could.

Now she waited.

And it didn't take long.

.

.

Not even 10 minutes and both guards showed subtle signs of central nervous system suppression, not unlike drinking a couple beers.

Not enough to get you stumbling and then suspecting foul play...but just enough to sub-consciously loosen tongues and secrets.

One of the guards, a particularly skinny man, broke the silence first as he initiated a conversation with his partner...an impressively rotund specimen of a human being.

"Dammit! I didn't sleep good yesterday afterall! You wouldn't mind letting me sleep a bit while you stand guard, would you old friend?", the skinny guard said as he yawned.

"What the hell are you talking about you Stick bug bastard! It's ME who has stood guard here for more than 5 hours now! You have been here for barely 1! You still have 7 more hours left! If anything I should be the one telling you to let me sleep, I didn't sleep good either...I'm still sleepy!", the round one said indignantly.

"Ok! Ok! Calm down you tub of lard...there is no way any of us can sleep before our 8 hours are up anyway. We both know what the boss will do to us if he caught us sleeping on the job", the skinny one scratched his head in mild frustration.

"Ugh...don't remind me of that monster more than you have to...we've never gone hungry since he took over, but we are nothing but his dogs now. Can't even leave this godforsaken hole in the ground if not for raiding with him.", the hefty guard spoke through grinding teeth.

"Yeah...the boss doesn't even trust us to walk out and piss 10 steps from the hideout...honestly if it wasn't for him being capable of doing that weird magic thing he does, I would have taken his head off myself!", The skinny one proclaimed boldly to his fat friend, emboldened by the drug in his system keeping his rationality suppressed.

"Alright hero, don't let the boss hear you say that...remember what he did to that one upstart kid three months back? One second he was alive and the next second boss was behind him with his head in his hand...I tell you he isn't a wizard he is a shinobi! I've seen one when I was a kid and I can never forget the fear they induce in you.", the chunky guard tried to reason with his friend.

"He could be a shinobi, a wizard, a devil, or a Buddha...as long as he keeps us fed and active, I'll stay happy...God knows our fortune has turned since he took over...If he is gone, I don't think we will EVER find anyone like him again", the skinny guard sighed.

"Bark! Bark! Bark! You were ready to take his head off a minute ago and now you want to eat out of his hand, coward?...Ugh, Im a coward too...we can't do anything now! it's all hopeless!", the Chubby guard held his head in despair.

"Calm down you tubby bastard, don't bring the mood down! Tell you what, you are out here for 5 hours now so you wouldn't know it...but I got good news for you. Today...the boss brought in a nice bit of haul. Some poor nobodies were carrying a ton of meat and the boss dealt with them. Their cart was packed to the brim with smoke cured pork chops! Not the skinny and tiny kind either...these were cut thick and still had the bone in, just the way you like them.", the skinny guard smiled with satisfaction as he said it.

"Huh? So what? Why are you smiling like that...there has to be more. Come on then, out with it!", the chubby guard frowned.

"What's more? The boss was nice enough to keep all of them aside for us! We are selling NONE of it! The boss said all of us get two chops or dinner as long as they last! And as if that wasn't good enough...for the next few days, boss has told us to take it easy...there will be no more raids for atleast the week!", the skinny guard chuckled.

"What? You should have said so sooner buddy! Oh I love this job, I love the boss, and I love you! It's been so long since we had a steady supply of meat for dinner...That cave is always damp, storing grains is a nightmare...hell, even sleeping is uncomfortable...but now, It's all worth it!" the chubby guard laughed in happiness.

The two guards then started talking about their long friendship and other pointless small stuff.

Aiki had heard enough, she had gotten all the intel she could get out of those two.

She silently removed herself from her vulnerable position and made her way back to the treeline. Once safely perched in a high tree, she started sorting the guard's chatter into useful bullet points.

"First of all, and thank the Gods for this one, there is only ONE shinobi in their midst...It still won't be easy, but it's not impossible now. Unless he was also keeping his chakra suppressed...he doesn't have enough chakra to pull off a shadow clone", Aiki had seen Naruto pull off the shadow clone jutsu...the chakra needed to spawn the clone itself was larger than the reserves of most shinobi, not to mention the equal splitting of chakra left after spawning the clone.

One shinobi could only be at one place at a time, so if she was careful and the enemy clueless...he could be ambushed and taken out. If it were two shinobi though, that strategy would have become infinitely tougher to pull off.

"Second, and this is lucky too, is that none of these insects leave their hole in the ground...so this is their ONE AND ONLY base of operations. I don't have to be worried about wiping them out and alerting a larger bandit ring.", Aiki let out a sigh of relief.

If it were the case that their operations were distributed over a large number of bases...then it would have become impossible for Aiki to deal with the operation on her own. Every new variable added to the chaos exponentially, and Aiki was no mathematician.

"Third, the cave is always damp...that means the subterranean river must really flow close to the cave floor. That is another stroke of good luck...I have another method of gauging their numbers now", Aiki knew what she was going to do next.

"Fourth, they haven't eaten meat in a while and now they get two chops each for dinner...none of these freeloading bastards are giving up on that, I can always just count the bones they throw out to verify the numbers of bandits in there", Aiki was satisfied with her ability to estimate the number of bandits now.

She could sense them out through her chakra senses by going up the river AND cross-verify that number by counting the bones they threw out. Each method was reliable, combined they were infallible.

"Fifth, the sentries guard the entrances for 8 hours each and it seems not all of them rotate out at the same time...so there is always someone watching.", Aiki figured based on how the guards were arguing about their shift timings.

"And sixth, the numbers and variables for this operation...will be stable for around a week based on what those two talked about. I'll still give myself a narrower margin of two days.", Aiki was finally done sorting out all useful intel from the conversation she had picked up.

She would use today to scout out the location, get an estimate on the numbers of enemies, and figure out the times at which the guards rotated.

And tomorrow night...she would make sure that none of the human garbage in that cave woke up to see the Sun on the day after tomorrow.

As for the first step for making sure what she planned came to pass...Aiki looked down from her vantage point and made sure no one was approaching and focused on her chakra senses to make sure no one was hidden and on the lookout.

Once she made sure the coast was clear...she climbed down and quickly ran over to the dense and tall shrubs at the bank of the lake and silently dived into them to, hiding herself.

Now hidden and close to the water, she focused on the air surrounding her...she focused on the feeling of the atmospheric pressure pressing on her constantly, the air entering and exiting her lungs...and she exerted her control on it.

Air around her slowly coalesced around her, cutting her off from the surrounding air, not unlike her wind veil jutsu.

But this pocket of air was bigger and it's purpose singular, to act as a source of fresh air for Aiki as she went underwater for extended periods of time.

When she was done, an invisible pocket of air surrounded her body like a body fitting suit...only it was separated from her body by some 30cm.

"I'll call it, Water breathing jutsu", Aiki thought as a satisfied smirk formed under her mask. Aiki knew it wasn't even close to her limit...she could manipulate 10 kilograms of air, that in an enclosed bubble...was worth 9 hours of air. She could stay under water for 9 hours before she needed to resurface for air, if she pushed her ability to the maximum.

Normally, that much air around her would have such a large volume (around 8 meters cubed) that the buoyancy of her bubble would force her to float on the water instead of submerging in it, a normal person would need to carry 8 tons of stuff on them just to overcome the buoyancy!

But just like Aiki's body did not suffer burns or frostbites due to her heat manipulation, this pocket of manipulated air did not contribute any buoyant force either.

Aiki's powers were a rule imposed on reality itself...they were NOT subject to the same limits anyone or anything else born of reality was.

Currently, she effectively had 20 minutes worth of air on her...this was more than enough for what she needed to do.

She silently stepped into the lake's water, the water parting around her air bubble instead of pushing up on it...and then she was completely submerged.

It didn't take her long to find the opening through which the subterranean river was draining into the lake.

She made her way to it and swam further upstream.

.

.

(Next day, Bandit hideout, Back entrance, 19:50 PM)

Aiki had collected all the information she could by this point.

Her trip under the bandit's hideout cave, going upstream on the subterranean river, had let her sense not only the number of the occupants...but also a rough layout of the cave based on how far or close the signatures were. All the bandits slept on the same floor, even the boss...the cave was a flat stretch of a hole with no levels or elevation variations, except a uniform decline from the front to the back.

It was no wonder, the bandits had complained about the cave being always damp...based on Aiki's chakra sense she had come as close as one or two meters to the floor of the hideout...only the solid layer of rock separating the two.

Aiki had taken 12 minutes to swim to the point where she could conduct her underground reconnaissance, 2 minutes to survey, and 6 minutes to swim back...just in time before her air grew too thick with Carbon Dioxide and her senses grew dull.

The numbers she found inside the cave? 14, including the shinobi bandit leader...plus one more, an almost non-existent little whisper at the edge of her perception...near the bandit leader's own position...that made this a 20 man organization.

After she came out of the lake, she quickly made her way back to the safety of the treeline around the cave and spent the rest of the evening mapping out the times at which the back entrance guards changed shifts and how much time it took for their replacements to show up.

At 4:20 AM, when the replacement for the freshly rotated guard came out...he carried with him a pile of bones in a large bucket...which he proceeded to empty into the lake with a disgusted expression on his face.

Based on the bucket and bone sizes and the number of bones she could count falling down the waterfall...her estimate about the number of occupants of the cave was correct. She had counted 41 bones, though if it meant the bastards had fed the girl they had taken captive...or someone took more than his share, Aiki didn't know.

What mattered, was that Aiki was sure of the numbers in that cave...the number of parasites that she needed to cut out from this world.

After she was done confirming the numbers based on the bones...Aiki moved to the front of the hideout, to observe how the bandits at the front rotated their shifts.

What she gathered after a good long bit of observation was...

At the front entrance, 4 men stood guard and they rotated out in groups of two every 4 hours at 12 AM, 4AM, 8AM, and so on. It took 10 minutes for the two new guards to show up at the front, effectively leaving only two people guarding for those 10 minutes.

At the back entrance, 2 men stood guard and one of them rotated out every 4 hours at the same time as the front. It took 15 minutes for the new guard to show up, effectively leaving only one man guarding for those 15 minutes.

One man, alone, vulnerable, and at her mercy...Aiki decided that she would start from the back.

She started planning out her operation meticulously.

And once her plan was made...she slept. She needed the rest, she couldn't afford to make any mistakes when her plan was set in motion.

When Aiki woke up, it was past 6 PM.

She prepared herself for what was to come, and made her way to the back entrance through the treeline.

There she waited for the clock to strike 8 PM, and for the guards to change shifts.

.

.

(Bandit hideout, Back entrance, 20:00 PM)

Aiki saw as one of the guards walked in, leaving his fellow guard, a tall and lanky man, alone for the next 15 minutes.

Once, Aiki's senses told her that the guard she saw was truly alone...she made her move.

Leaping out of the tree-line she rushed the lone guard as fast as she could, her fist ready.

Before her target knew what was happening, he felt a small fist collide with his temple at more than 33 meters per second speed...he couldn't even hit the ground, much less scream, before he blacked out.

Aiki swiftly grabbed his neck in a leg-lock to generate extra force, exerted as much force as she could and was rewarded with a dull but clear crack.

If Aiki's adrenaline wasn't fueling her, she might have stopped and contemplated the point of no return she had crossed...but right now she felt only an urge to execute her plan, there was no turning back now, hesitation meant failure or death.

Aiki grabbed the now lifeless body and studied it carefully for 2 minutes...not out of guilt or as a method to apologize, but for what comes next.

When she was done, she dragged his body into the lake...pulled out her kunai and chopped his pinkie finger off, as a proof of her kill and it's impact on her mission of bandit suppression...that was the village's standard operation procedure. Heads of enemy ninja and pinkies of other dead enemies.

Once she saw the current drag the body to the edge of the waterfall and over it...she walked over to the place where he had once stood guard, and...

"Transformation jutsu!", Aiki transformed into the man she had just ended.

The two minutes she spent reading every detail of the body, were well spent...only his mother could have told Aiki apart from him.

Now, all she had to do was wait for the next guard to show up.

.

.

(Bandit hideout, Back entrance, 00:00 AM)

Aiki had stood guard for the last 4 hours.

She was joined by another guard just 15 minutes after she had committed her first murder.

Both of them stood at attention, silently...Aiki was thankful for it.

After the first few minutes, the weight of what she had done had started to settle in.

She had killed a man. She had attacked him before he could react and then broken the neck of a helpless man between her thighs. She had taken a life, and she could never give it back even if she wanted to.

"NO!...NO, do not think that Aiki!...That man, no, that monster...was just as bad as the ones who reduced a happy family to shredded meat...they mutilate and enslave a poor girl for god knows what depraved pleasure...you are doing the world a favor Aiki...these are not humans, they are beasts", Aiki tried to convince herself while trying to keep her face neutral and alert.

Now, as the time for the next phase of the plan drew nearer...the adrenaline once more took over and suppressed all her doubts and debates.

Aiki turned to her fellow guard and spoke for the first time that night, "Chilly tonight, no?"

The other guard was quite freaked out, "What the hell was that? Don't scare me this late in the night! Why is your voice all girly and messed up man?"

This time Aiki spoke in a lower pitched and deeper voice, after pretending to clear her throat, "Flu, Throat hurts."

The other guard relaxed this time, "Now you sound better!...Just get that clicking thing in your voice checked out...don't want any of us to get sic-"

His words got cut short. Instead of sound...blood rose from his mouth.

He looked down at the shuriken stuck in his throat, keeping him from making any sounds beyond gurgling...and at the short masked kid who stood where his fellow guard stood a moment ago.

"Thank You for letting me know.", Aiki said the final words he would ever hear.

His first instinct was to run away...from pain, from danger, and from death. But he saw the headband on Aiki's head.

"Konoha?...It's all over!", he thought as despair washed over him and his legs gave away...only his hands weakly reached for the offending bit of metal in his throat.

Before he could suffer anymore...Aiki rushed him a kunai.

In his final moments, the rapidly approaching point of the kunai was all that took up his vision.

Aiki pulled the bloodied kunai out of the man's eye socket and wiped the blood on his clothes, she did the same for her shuriken.

Again, after studying the man for a minute, his body too was surrendered to the waterfall after the removal of his pinkie.

Aiki used her earth manipulation power to bury the blood stains under 10 kilos of dirt, mud, and rocks.

Aiki's hands were shaking slightly...this murder was particularly gruesome...but mind was as clear as it could be.

She transformed into the man she had just killed and then using every bit of her chakra control and concentration...created a transformed clone that looked like her transformed self. She left this clone standing guard in a patch of land full of shrubs and bushes...to hide his lack of shadows or mass from the next guard.

She left the clone 'guarding' and herself transformed into the very first guard she had killed...the one who got a broken neck for his misdeeds.

"Next step...Infiltration.", Aiki steeled her resolve and walked into the base.

It was time for her guard shift to end.

.

.

(Inside the cave, 00:10 AM)

The transformed Aiki walked into the cave showing no apprehension on her face or pace.

Inside her mind she kept repeating her plan..."Take out the shinobi first, he is the biggest threat and the glue that holds this operation together."

As she walked inside, the section of the cave where the bandit leader's chakra signature rested, drew closer and closer.

It turned out that the leader had his own little private quarter of sorts, natural stone formations forming three walls and a curtain forming the fourth.

Aiki couldn't see inside, but she felt the two signatures inside...and they told her enough.

This close, with only a curtain separating them, Aiki could sense not only his chakra but also the agitations in it...and from what she could sense, the man was well and truly asleep.

"I know I didn't leave any clues behind for him to suspect anything...but I am still in a vulnerable position, a single second of carelessness would be the death of me.", even knowing that the plan was going as best as it could...she still didn't feel safe or relaxed.

Finally, she reached the stretch of the cave where all the grunts slept on damp mats and straw pillows.

Aiki naturally didn't know who out of these animals was going to replace her, but she didn't need to.

From what she had picked up, their boss had killed enough grunts who missed their guard rotation, that everyone made sure to wake up for their shift without prompting.

Out of the 14 men inside the cave...three were awake.

Two who had just rotated out from their shift guarding the front entrance and were now preparing to sleep...and one who saw Aiki walk closer and got up on his own to go and guard the back entrance.

"Huh...I didn't need to know what the first guard sounded like afterall...", Aiki had kept the second guard alive and fished that information out of him in case she needed to talk...still better to know and not need, than need and not know.

Aiki laid down on the empty mat left behind and pretended to sleep for the next 30 minutes.

Her mind though, was torn between counting the time and thinking of new and creative ways everything could go horribly wrong for her here.

.

.

(Inside the cave, 00:45 AM)

Aiki reached out with her chakra senses to sense the men surrounding her...and more importantly, the state of the bandit leader.

"Still asleep.", even if Aiki checked it a 100 times...she was still nervous.

But she had come too far to run away now, there was no stopping what she had started unless she died or failed her mission...unless she planned on abandoning the girl she had sworn to protect.

"Wind Veil Jutsu", Aiki summoned the silencing veil of air around her...the one she had summoned so many times that it was almost instinctual now.

She needed to be as stealthy as she could be for what she needed to do.

She rose up from the bedding and silently made her way to the bandit leader's room...each step slow and taken after making sure the leader was still asleep.

Finally...she stood in front of the curtain that separated her from her target.

Aiki took a deep breath to calm her nerves, the sound of which could never leak outside the limits of her wind veil. "Take out the leader first and cripple their organization...take out the grunts after that as they sleep...then I can save the girl", she went over her plan again.

She pulled out her kunai, readied herself and lifted the curtain so slowly that even the air was not disturbed much...and slipped into the 'room'.

What she saw made her gasp out loud...if it weren't for her Wind Veil protecting her, the mission would have already failed!

The bandit leader slept on a bed at the far edge of the room...But on the floor, near the 'door'...the girl she had sworn to protect, was chained to the floor like an animal.

Her arms and legs were bent at angles that were definitely wrong and painful...Aiki didn't know if even medical jutsu could fix that damage.

Tears had dried on her face and around her eyes, bruises lined her face, neck, limbs, and everywhere Aiki could see.

"And she cannot even scream out in pain or anger", Aiki felt her own eyes become moist out of anger and injustice.

As Aiki stood frozen for a second, taking in the hellish scene and in that time, the vacant eyes of the girl frozen in a 1000 yard stare looked at her...looked through her.

Aiki swiftly pointed the kunai at the sleeping man and put a finger on her lips.

The girl, to her credit remained silent.

Whether she did it because she understood what Aiki was planning on doing, or she simply didn't have the energy to move...was something Aiki didn't bother thinking about at that time.

Aiki instead, walked closer to the man sleeping carelessly in his bed...making sure to lookout for any traps or alarms the man might have hidden as a final line of safety.

But the pressure of the situation, the weight of what she needed to do and the implications of what would happen if she were to fail...had already narrowed her vision.

Her inexperience showed clearly, she had gotten tunnel visioned...only her kunai and the enemy ninja's vulnerable form existed in her line of sight.

*Squeak*

Aiki's pupils contracted to pin pricks so fast that her eyes hurt, her breathing grew panicked, and she let out an involuntary gasp.

She had failed to notice that there was a squeaky toy like thing under her foot...until it was too late. She had stepped on it and it had done it's job.

Aiki couldn't even move as the weight of how bad she had messed up pressed on her...she just stood there and waited for he enemy ninja to wake up.

One second...Ten seconds...A minute...nothing.

Embarrassment flashed on her face as she realized that the toy was small enough that it was inside her Wind Veil...the noise had not escaped out of the boundary of her Wind Veil Jutsu, just like her breathing and gasping had not escaped.

She looked down and saw that the ground near her target was littered with this small squeaky toys.

"A shinobi through and through...even when sleeping in the middle of his base and surrounded by his men, he trusts no one with his safety", Aiki thought as she drew closer to this bed...this time making sure to not let panic override her senses.

Finally, Aiki stood at the edge of his bed...she raised her kunai arm high, making sure that one strike is all it would take.

"If someone else had come after you...you could have lived longer...but unfortunately for you, it's me standing here. Your fate rested in my hands, and it was sealed the moment you showed me how much of a disgusting vermin you were...Death is too good for what you have done, I hope Hell is long and painful", Aiki brought down her kunai arm as fast as she could.

With a sickening sound that would never escape out into the world outside her Wind Veil...the kunai buried itself in the bandit leader's throat.

The bandit leader's eyes opened wide as the shock of having a foreign object in his body...and the pain that followed, jolted him awake.

His first instinct was to move, he knew staying still was certain death...but no matter how much he tried, his body would not listen.

"Paralyzed!", his brain registered almost instantly...he felt it too, the kunai in his throat had shredded whatever was between his Atlas and Axis vertebra...including the spinal cord.

He drew his hate filled gaze towards his killer...and saw the face of his killer...and his hatred turned into pure unadulterated anger!

A kid...no a shinobi...a Konoha shinobi.

"Damn Konoha! They took my parents, my childhood, my teammates...and now even my life!", he seethed with impotent rage.

Even if it were his final act, he wanted the Konoha ninja to suffer...with the final breathe still caught in his lungs, which were now rapidly filling with his own blood...he wanted to scream out, gurgle, make a noise, attract attention, anything to make his killer's day worse.

Aiki, as if reading what went on his mind, held her breath and dispelled the Wind Veil Jutsu.

Her hand landed on his nose, and she once more exerted her control over the very air around her...and forcefully sucked out ALL the air inside the man's respiratory system.

The bandit leader, felt his lungs collapse under the body's internal pressure. Letting out a single breathe, much less screaming...was beyond him now.

He blacked out in mere seconds after that...Aiki swiftly took his head clean off.

It was after this, that Aiki finally turned around and looked at the girl chained to the floor...her 1000 yard stare was gone, there were tears in her eyes now.

Their eyes met, Aiki looked at her for a few seconds...as if to tell her that she had made sure that the one who took her voice away...died without being able to make a single sound as well.

Then, Aiki reactivated her Wind Veil...and walked out of the 'room'.

Then...After almost 4 days...Aiki stopped suppressing her chakra. She felt power surge inside her, she felt stronger and healthier.

There was no longer any need to keep her chakra suppressed...none of the human-cattle left had any chakra sensing abilities.

The mission hadn't ended...there were many lives she had yet to reap.

.

.

(Bandit Hideout, Back Entrance, 1:00 AM)

This time, as Aiki made her way to the back entrance...she was no longer as worried about maintaining absolute silence as before.

Under the Wind Veil she reached near the mouth of the cave.

She could see the guard she had changed the shifts with, and her clone standing at attention with their backs turned to her...oblivious to what had happened inside the cave.

She readied her kunai, and in her off hand, she pulled out a shuriken...just in case the guard turned around before Aiki reached close enough.

The guard didn't turn around. Aiki now stood right behind him.

She holstered her shuriken, put her hand on his back, and before he could react to the sudden touch...she pulled out all the air inside the man's lungs, collapsing them...the same way she had done to the bandit's leader.

He couldn't even scream as a powerful kick to the back of his legs, saw him fall down hard on his knees...they were definitely broken but he couldn't even scream out in pain.

The guard tried desperately to get atleast some air into his body, and looked at his fellow guard for help...his fellow guard who disappeared into a puff of smoke when Aiki dispelled her clone jutsu.

Before he could do anything more...Aiki ended his life by driving her kunai through her skull.

She would have preferred to end him cleanly with a kunai to the brain, without the whole sucking out air thing...but Aiki was still only 13, and the man was too tall for Aiki's hand to reach his skull...and she couldn't afford even a short surprised yelp escaping his lips and alerting the others.

She severed her latest victim's pinkie finger, put it in her bag where she kept the two others, wiped the blood off of her kunai...

And walked back into the cave.

.

.

(Inside the cave, 01:20 AM)

Now Aiki had reached the second hard part of her plan, right after the part where she needed to take care of an enemy shinobi.

There were 12 men sleeping here, close to each other. If even one of them made a sound...then there was a high chance the others would wake up.

But, Aiki wasn't worried...the last 4 deaths she had caused, had now given her enough of an experience on how to do it properly.

She had planned on driving a kunai in their heads under the effect of the Wind Veil...afterall they weren't enemy shinobi, the intelligence department had no use for the intel extracted from their heads.

The issue of them letting out a dying gasp was likewise not something Aiki feared...when she quite literally had the power to take their breath away.

What she was more worried about...was the blood leaking from the bodies spreading far and the sensation of a fluid touching them waking up the still alive bandits.

What was worse...was that the incline in the room was not uniform...she couldn't just start killing from one side of the room and expect the other side to remain dry.

Nor could she realistically be expected to properly deal with one target before their blood reached another.

So she once again...came up with a solution that only she could have come up with.

.

.

Aiki hovered over the sleeping form of the man closest to the corridor leading to the back entrance, Wind Veil active...and her single senbon raised in her hand.

Senbon was never the first choice for a killing tool...but even a pebble could be deadly if lodged in someone's brain...and the senbon left a smaller entry wound, and thus a slower rate of blood flow.

By now, what followed, Aiki did it almost algorithmically.

Step 1: Bend down.

Step 2: Stab the senbon into the brain through the eye socket and give it a good few wide rotations.

Step 3: Hold breath and dispel Wind Veil.

Step 4: Hand on the mouth and draw out all air from the target's lungs.

And now Aiki had her fifth kill under her belt.

What she did now, was new.

She placed her foot, her ankle touching the now red, and still warm ear of her freshest kill.

She felt the ground under her foot...every grain of dirt, every millimeter of compressed red sandstone...and she forced it to give way using her Earth Manipulation powers.

Her power over the Earth carved a cuboidal cavity under the now dead man's head...20 centimeters long and wide, 10centimeters high...just under 10kilograms worth of sandstone displaced silently...with not even a single vibration...to now create a ditch where the man's rapidly cooling and congealing blood collected.

Aiki took a step away from the site of her freshest murder...and took a moment to internalize what she had done here.

After all...she needed to do it 11 more times.

.

.

(Inside the cave, 01:30 AM)

12 men had slept in this cave not even 15 minutes ago.

Now...12 corpses laid there, each of them killed by a senbon through the eye...their bodies going still before they even knew what was happening.

They couldn't even exhale a dying gasp, their lungs collapsed as air was rapidly but silently ripped from them.

Their blood collected in small sandstone ditches under their heads.

Aiki had taken 16 lives tonight...she felt nothing.

No...it was more like, she felt a lot...to the point where her mind was blank right now.

The rest of the plan was the only clear thing in her mind...so it clung to it for comfort, for structure, and for survival.

She had taken 16 lives tonight...and there were 4 lives she had yet to take.

.

.

(Bandit Hideout, Front Entrance, 1:40 AM)

Aiki walked to the front of the cave entrance, the four men guarding the cave were visible to her now.

She pulled out a couple shuriken from her holster...Stealth, hiding, silence...it wasn't needed anymore. There was no one coming to save these four from her.

Aiki wasn't confident about throwing four shuriken at the same time, and for all four of them to hit their mark...she wasn't Sasuke Uchiha, the shuriken jutsu prodigy of their batch.

But, two shuriken, one with each hand...it would be embarrassing if she failed.

She threw the two shuriken...they found their marks in the back of two of the guard's skulls...they crumpled to the ground, their limbs folding and a loud dying gasp escaping their mouths as their diaphragms relaxed...dead before they touched the ground.

The other two guards...it took less than a second for them to see their dead partners, and scream from the terror and shock of how suddenly their lives ended.

While they stood shocked...Aiki rushed them at her top speed, unsuppressed chakra fueling her speed and strength as she pulled out a kunai.

Before the guard on the left...the one she had rushed...could even react, her kunai buried itself in his stomach...followed by her hand till her wrist.

The dying guard let out a blood curdling scream of despair and pain, looking at his friend for help...who had already turned away, in an attempt to run away from his fate.

Aiki pulled her kunai and hand, wet with digestive fluids, blood, and other bodily fluids...leaving the man bending over in pain and in a futile attempt to keep his guts from falling out...Aiki stabbed him twice in the heart and once in the throat...he died within the minute.

She turned around to see that the last bandit...was running away, screeching like a scared child...running away from death.

Alas, nobody ran away from their destiny. Aiki was his death, and nobody could tell death to come again another day.

Aiki rushed him down before he had run even 20 meters away from her.

She stabbed her kunai in her lower back and gave it a nasty twist...his legs gave away and he fell on his face, crying and screaming apologies all the while.

"What good are your empty apologies...can they bring back that family? Can they turn that poor girl's life around?", Aiki wondered as her hands subconsciously stabbed the screeching man in the lungs multiple times.

His screaming grew into gurgling and then into silence as he slowly drowned in his own blood over the next 2 minutes with Aiki standing on his back.

She took off his pinkie finger, walked back to the cave, and collected the rest of the pinkie fingers and shurikens.

Now, the final part of her operation started.

.

.

(Inside the cave, 2:05 AM)

Aiki walked into the room where the now cold and headless corpse of the bandit leader lay on his blood soaked bed.

The broken girl chained to the floor now looked a little better...perhaps the death of her tormentor gave her some comfort...Aiki didn't know, but she could see that the girl was coherent now.

Aiki walked over to her, sat down next to her, and let out a massive sigh...tensions of the past few days leaving her.

"I'm going to free you now. Everyone of them who...did this...to you, are dead. I killed them, maybe you heard?", Aiki spoke out in her raspy voice as she grabbed the part of the chain that kept her anchored to the wall.

"Heat manipulation: Rapid cooling", Aiki said out loud to better focus on what she was doing.

Under her command, the metal under her grasp cooled to impossibly low temperatures, introducing fault lines in the metal chain...something she exploited when she pulled the chain taut and brought down the butt of her kunai rapidly on the weakened chain...shattering it and freeing the girl they bound.

The girl watched her do it with her eyes wide and mouth hanging open...Aiki winced when she saw a few teeth missing.

"Listen...I can leave you in the closest town or city, and you can start your life over...I don't have anything I can give you to help you besides any money or food I find here...so which one do you want to go to...don't worry if you can't speak, I can read your lips", Aiki told her in a sad and wavering voice...the injustice of the situation weighing down on her.

She couldn't bring unknown people back to Konoha, even civilians, those were the guidelines...so this was the best Aiki could do for her.

The girl, after hearing that she could communicate with Aiki...broke into a sad smile as tears ran down her eyes.

"I can't", the girl spoke wordlessly...Aiki reading her words off her lips.

"You can't? Yes, I can see you can't walk...don't worry, I'll carry you on my back...I'm strong.", Aiki reassured her, but her heart already knew something was deeply wrong with the situation.

"I can't...go on anymore...I want to meet my little brother, my parents...I want to see them", the girl said as no voice ever rose from her throat.

Aiki felt her heart break at that innocent request, but she was on a mission and she couldn't show any emotions.

"Listen...girl...I don't know how much you remember...but your family...", Aiki said but was cut off by the hot whispers escaping the girl's throat.

"I know...I know...they are gone...and I wanna go with them...please...", she said with a smile while tears still flowed down her face.

Aiki couldn't maintain her composure at that, "WHAT? You! Do you know what you are asking me to do! I did...ALL of this...for you!", she waved her hand and pointed to the cave, "And you...you want to...just stop!".

At Aiki's outburst, the girl's tears hastened and her smile grew more unhinged, she screamed in silent whispers, "The man...he took everything from me...my family...my possessions...and since he brought me here, my dignity is gone too."

Aiki had never heard someone in so much pain...her own soul ached at that, she couldn't stop her tears...she couldn't say anything, words eluded her.

The girl's face grew desperate and sad, "I am broken, I can't walk, I can't talk, I can't use my hand...I can't even kill myself and have to ask you to do it instead...I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry...", she kept silently whispering that.

Aiki had to squeeze her shoulder to break her out of her loop, the girl jerked her head upwards and locked eyes with Aiki.

"Please...you are the only one now...you are the only one I can turn to for help...please, show me this kindness...free me...I can't go on...Im not strong like you!", she whispered out in between silent sobs...then placed her hands on Aiki's shoulders with much effort.

Aiki shuddered...and despite her better judgement...opened her senses to the girl...feeling her emotions through her chakra sense.

DESPAIR. PAIN. HOPELESSNESS. RAGE. DENIAL. DISGUST. SELF-HATE...and finally a faint glimmer of hope at the end of it all.

Only a second of feeling what the girl felt, was enough for Aiki to jump away instinctively and then throw up where she landed.

Aiki looked up at the girl with wavering eyes, freely leaking tears at this point...she understood what needed to be done.

With great effort and a broken heart, she walked over to the girl...who just looked at her with a smile and teary eyes...it seemed she also understood that her arguments had gone through.

Aiki sat in front of the girl and hugged her tightly...for a few seconds, or perhaps a few minutes...the two kids just silently sobbed at the absurdity of the situation they found themselves in.

When they separated, Aiki no longer cried, and the girl no longer looked sad.

Aiki placed her hands on the girl's temples...cupping her head between her hands.

"In this big wide world...you are the one I love the most right now...thank you, my hero...in another life, we could have been sisters", the girl spoke wordlessly through her smile.

Aiki was surprised, "You...know I'm a girl? How?" Due to Aiki's bald appearance and lack of secondary sexual characteristics, people often mistook her for a boy.

The girl, laughed...or Aiki figured it was her version of a laugh, as it was completely silent save for a little air escaping her throat.

"How...you ask? Why, it's because of your eyes silly...such pretty eyes are not something I would expect a boy to have", her lips read.

Aiki smiled at that too...then frowned...and then started sobbing. "I...I will make it quick...you won't feel a thing."

The girl's smile dropped slightly...but then she closed her eyes and her smile grew larger...Aiki didn't know what she was thinking about, and Aiki wasn't going to ask.

Instead, she readied herself...She felt the negative charges concentrated in the ground below her and the positive charges concentrated in the sky above her.

These charges, she exerted her control over...and felt opposite charges concentrate over them...ready to neutralize each other on her command.

"Lightning Manipulation: Electric Discharge", Aiki whispered through tearful eyes, her technique ready for it's gruesome use.

Before she let those charges loose...Aiki asked the girl, "Hey...what's your name?"

"Why? So you can get nightmares about me? I know you are a kind one, little sister...I'm cruel enough to force you to kill me, but not enough to let you cry over some girl you just met for the rest of your days.", the girl whispered through her smile.

Aiki too smiled at her through teary eyes, "Worrying about your murderer? You are a funny one...I would have loved to...know you better...There is this one guy...I love him very much...I wish you could have met him...he is just like you, he cares about everyone...even when they hurt him..."

Aiki couldn't speak anymore, she broke down crying again.

The girl, raised her least broken arm and placed her hand awkwardly on top of Aiki's head. "Don't ever think of yourself as my killer, little sister. You...have saved me today. You are freeing me, I'll be free...I'll be with my little brother again, my parents too...I wish you could have met them too...No, I said too much...don't let me weigh you down ever, little sister...you are my hero."

Aiki only cried harder at that...but then steeled her nerves.

There was one last thing she needed to do...she would break down after that.

"Then...any final words?", Aiki asked through gritted teeth.

"Live happily...get together with that boy you told me about...I'll be cheering for you.", the girl whispered.

"Thank you.", Aiki rasped out...and activated her Electric Discharge jutsu.

In a blinding flash...what once was the face of an alive, if broken, girl...had swollen and burned into a charred mess.

Blood leaked from previously present and newly created orifices, steam and smoke with the stink of burning flesh, hair and blood wafted everywhere.

The eyes that had looked at her with kindness had popped out of their sockets as the fluid in them flash boiled.

The face that had smiled with her, cried with her, the one she had striven to save...now looked barely human, the current carving black channels across her face.

Aiki had saved her.

Aiki had killed her.

Mechanically Aiki stood up, took her kunai and added her pinkie finger to her collection as well.

She walked over to the bed, picked up the enemy ninja's head, and stuffed it in her bag as well.

"Mission Complete.", a small thought surfaced above the static in her mind.

She turned her head to the girl she had just killed.

"Mission Completed."

She had killed 20 men tonight...and not one of their deaths had pained her, they were but beasts in her eyes.

"Mission Completed."

But, her...she was just a simple girl...innocent girl.

"Mission Completed."

If a chunin had taken this job, like the mission scroll suggested...maybe she could have lived.

"Mission Completed."

Aiki could no longer run from the facts. Aiki had taken a young, innocent, undeniably human life.

"Mission Completed."

She felt her legs grow weaker, she fell down on her hands and knees.

No one was around the cave. Aiki had made sure of that.

But if anyone were around the cave in that moment...they would have heard the anguished wailing of a heartbroken child.

A child who was forced to kill another child due to no particular fault of either of them.